The world went red.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. The actual fucking world turned crimson at the edges of my vision as I watched Belle's body arc through the air, watched her hit the ground with a sound that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of whatever life I had left, watched her lie there without moving while the creature that hurt her turned its hollow eyes back toward me with that patient, ancient hunger.
Something inside me snapped.
Not broke. Snapped. Like a rubber band pulled past its limit, like a dam giving way under pressure it was never designed to handle, like every single survival instinct I'd developed over the past six weeks suddenly deciding that survival wasn't the priority anymore.
Belle wasn't moving.
